TO A. A. BOGDANOV

Written: Written between March 28 and April 19, 1902
Published:
First published in 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XIII.
Sent from London to Vologda.
Printed from the original.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
pages 110-111.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.Other Formats:Text
• README

We are very glad about your proposal for the publication
of pamphlets. There is, in fact, a certain lack of pamphlets,
and we could easily publish them in any quantity. (As
regards transport, we cannot at the moment guarantee
regular delivery en masse, but we hope that this too will be
constantly improving.) However we beg you not to insist on
the stipulation that pamphlets should be accepted or
rejected en bloc, without any partial changes at all. This
stipulation is extremely inconvenient, and will hold up
everything terribly. Take the very first article sent to us, about
organisation (the technical problems of organisation). In
the general opinion of the editorial board, this article (
interesting and valuable though it is) cannot appear in this
shape, because it contains quite inappropriate and tactless
remarks (like “one-man rule” and “dictatorship by one
member of the committee”, etc.); and there are also minor
defects requiring correction. Yet an agreement about such
changes, not particularly essential from the author’s
standpoint (but unquestionably necessary), could be reached
without any difficulty at all. Think this over well, and
don’t hold up an important undertaking out of a desire
to impose particularly restrictive conditions on us.

We repeat that the article is, on the whole, practical
and valuable; in general, we are even prepared to agree to
the stipulation that articles should be accepted or rejected
as a whole, without partial corrections. But, then, under
this stipulation, we should be obliged to reject your very
first article, and that would be harmful to the cause. After
all, it would surely be possible to come to an agreement
with the author about any partial corrections. Why don’t
you try and let us make these corrections by way of
experiment? If you like we shall write to you in greater detail
about what precisely should be changed.